Marine Corps Orders Court Martial for LtCol. Scheller
The Marine Corps announced Wednesday it was referring six charges against Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller for allegedly violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice to court-martial.
A spokesman for Training and Education Command said the charges include contempt toward officials; disrespect toward superior commissioned officers; willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer; failure to obey orders; dereliction of duty; and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
The charges are a new development in the case against Scheller, a 17-year Marine Corps veteran who was relieved of duty in August for publishing a video on Facebook critical of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan. They also follow his Tuesday release from a military brig at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, where he was detained for eight days for allegedly violating a gag order that prohibited him from posting on social media.
Scheller’s detention drew attention from members of Congress, including 12 Republican House members who sent a letter last week calling for his case to receive an expedited review, writing that his confinement “appears to be simply for messaging, retribution, and convenience.”
In his August commentary that sparked the controversy, Scheller condemned military and civilian leaders for their botched effort to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan.
“I’m not making this video because it’s potentially an emotional time,” Scheller said in his video. “I’m making it because I have a growing discontent and contempt for my perceived ineptitude at the foreign policy level and I want to specifically ask some questions to some of my senior leaders. I’m not saying we’ve got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying: Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up?'”
